Ready to Purchase StationPlaylist but........

[ChiefOperator]

Folks-

I have an AM talk that is almost all local programming. Live during the week, pre-recorded on Sunday (sign off at sunset). They need a system for basic automation and basic live assist.

I've demoed StationPlaylist based on recommendations from this board. I'm impressed, but it seems more suited to music than to talk. Before I buy, has anyone used this system for talk format. My guess is that it will work fine, but I just thought I'd ask in case anyone has direct experience.

Does anyone have a better recommendation at around the same cost (or a little more). If not, I'll probably pull the trigger on this system.

Finally, are there any StationPlaylist users who would be willing to talk to me a little about the system off-list??

THANKS!

 

[mp3RadioGuy]

StationPlaylist is definitely geared for automated music stations. I love SPL but I don’t think it will fit the needs of a talk station. You might look into WireReady, which works well at news/talk stations and won’t cost you an arm and a leg. I’ve used both SPL & WireReady and both a solid programs.

http://wireready.com/products.php

 

[RadioMan203]

I've used StationPlaylist for years and even wrote the review in Radio World, but I've always used it for music station applications. Why not subscribe to the Yahoo Group for StationPlaylist and ask the question? The main developer as well as many users from the US and abroad will probably give you some good answers (and maybe any follow-up related questions you may not have thought of).

I know a local NPR affiliate that uses WireReady and they seem to have very good success with it. I have never used it personally but some fellow engineers have also praised it as well.

 

[ChiefOperator]

Thank you both for the input. I didn't know that SPL had a Yahoo group. I'll head over there....

Thanks again.....

 

[ChiefOperator]

I've been playing around with the demo for a few weeks now and have to say: WOW! I've been running various dayparts and SPL is playing segments, stopsets, obeying automation commands, firing hard-sync legal IDs, and even commanding a switcher to go to TOH news. SPL is a gem.

The only thing I dislike about SPL is the the GUI for live-assist. There are other ways it could be layed out that would make it simpler and a little more friendly.. But who can complain given the price )

I maintain iMediatouch for a station and SPL seems to do everything the station is using iMediatouch for. If SPL is stable (and it appears to be), I'll increasing ask myself why stations are spending $15,000-20,000 for an iMT system??


(disclosure: I have no relationship with SPL )

 

[joep]

I maintain iMediatouch for a station and SPL seems to do everything the station is using iMediatouch for. If SPL is stable (and it appears to be), I'll increasing ask myself why stations are spending $15,000-20,000 for an iMT system??

The answer to this is quite simple. 24/7 access to support personnel is invaluable... knowing a company will be around in a year is invaluable... and most operators don't want to have to email New Zealand to get support.

In some markets, an automation system that is down can cost an operator thousands of dollars per hour.

Would you trust the most mission critical part of your business to a 200 dollar piece of software?

 

[RadioMan203]

Would you trust the most mission critical part of your business to a 200 dollar piece of software?

Well, it's a little more than $200 for the full Pro suite, but StationPlaylist has been around for almost a decade. I've been using it with various stations and staff of varying degrees of computer knowledge with great success. Grant, there are packages out there that cost much more and you're paying for the 24/7 support that may or may not ever be needed. I think StationPlaylist has only become better with age and it shows.

I will agree that with ChiefOperator that the GUI took a little getting use to but it runs wonderfully. When I ran my oldies westream I had the station in a closet at a friend's during the 6 month it took me to move and finally get the local phone utility to install my DSL lines. The system even worked around my own programming missteps and kept the station online.

Paying good money doesn't guarantee you performance and/or support. Ask my friends who used Digital Jukebox - and they use it for mission-critical, money-making radio and not the recreational web stream I operated for 7 years.

 

[ChiefOperator]

Thanks for the input.

Hey PA_Tune-
Yes, SPL is much less expensive, but that doesn't mean that SPL hasn't been developed to a level where it is stable.
I have yet to hear anyone state that SPL is buggy or can't perform, statements that are made about other more expensive products.

I agree that support is invaluable but not for an additional $15,000, especially when the support is mediocre at best. As I mentioned in my post, I maintain an iMediatouch system for an AM. It's a four machine system: on-air, production, logger, and log tools. We recently had a serious problem that disrupted our air product and the support was mediocre at best! One email wasn't even answered and each time we called, they offered a suggestion and then got off the phone. The problem continued for over nine days. And ask the station owner in WA about his issues that have never been fixed. I'm not trying to slam iMediatouch because I do like the system. But when it comes to the issue of support, I wonder whether the $1,200 yearly fee can be justified or is any better than the SPL support. .

The sad thing is that so far I've received better email support from SPL than from iMediatouch, even though I'm only trying out the SPL demo!!

I've shown SPL to other engineers who like the product but think that the GUI looks "toyish." I have to agree. I think that SPL could sell itself to larger stations if it cleaned up its GUI and made it look more like a major player (looks do count when purchase decisisions are made). In fact, I'm going to make that suggestion to the developer. And perhaps he would be willing to add telephone support for a yearly fee.

Finally, PA-Tune, I appreciate your input and hope that my comments are not seen as harsh or personal. It's just my view.

THANKS!

 

[bossbill]

OMT Mediatouch support depends on who you get on the phone. Based on my experience I would not do it again. It's a great-looking system, but I'm not too sure why they're still doing upgrades to simple things like cart rotation. Arrakis had that handled 20 years ago in DOS. And autofill, and delayed cue for return liners, etc.

When one spends $$$ for a system to replace an old DOS system, one expects to move forward, not backward. But we sounded tighter with our old DOS system. My red flag should have been when the company rep kept telling us that certain things should be done in traffic instead of in the system. It was because OMT couldn't do it.

I've officially given up. We're using OMT on our 4 FM stations; for my acquisition I will look at something else, maybe something "low-end". That will give us a lot of spare $$ to pay for support.

 

[ChiefOperator]

Hey, Bill, I sent you a message off-list....

 

[joep]

Yes, SPL is much less expensive, but that doesn't mean that SPL hasn't been developed to a level where it is stable.
I have yet to hear anyone state that SPL is buggy or can't perform, statements that are made about other more expensive products.

ChiefOp -- to clarify my comments from earlier in this thread: Please understand that I'm not being critical of StationPlaylist in any way -- I'm sure it's a great product and probably works as well as, if not better than the AudioVAULTs and the NexGens of the world.

Let's look at this from the point of a piece of hardware. Suppose there was a guy in your locale that makes transmitters.... Wonderful transmitters.... Built like a tank transmitters. And they're very inexpensive too! They're FCC type accepted and perfect for your needs. The only problem is, this guy only builds two of them per year. You can call him for service, but he lives a few hours away and he sometimes goes on vacation and all you get is his answering machine. He can provide you parts, but he doesn't have a big inventory, and for the bigger stuff he needs to go into his machine shop and make them. Sometimes this can take up to a week. The manual is sketchy -- there is a set of schematics and block diagrams, but not much else. No theory of operation section is provided.

Now, if you were a corporate bean counter -- would you want your general manager or engineer to buy one of these transmitters? After all, it's probably better made than a Harris / BE / Nautel, etc. All of these big manufacturers have large corporations behind them. They can afford to have an inventory of parts and somebody available 24/7 for tech support. They can be there when the small transmitter guy can't.

So, even though the guy that builds the transmitters in his garage builds BETTER transmitters, the corporate guys are going to want to buy from a company that has the better support behind it. Plus, there's somebody to sue when something goes wrong. ;D

 

[ChiefOperator]

PA_Tune-

I understand that you weren't being critical. I went on my rant only because I had a frustrating experience with iMediatouch tech support.

Anyway, thanks for the clarification. It was well put. I understand and agree with you...

Thanks again

 

[Charlie]

(a UK view)

I've been involved in several projects (eg: live-sounding automated internet) that relied on something simple in the set-up stakes - SPL Studio (along with it's brother, Creator) does very well. Voicetracks overlap with the song intros - no messing with a segue editor, the ducks sound natural and if you want to add internal DSP plugins you can. It'll also take care of website "now playing" templates and Amazon/image linking for "buy this track" shopping and the like.

GUI is a bit simple but it's not really designed for fast-paced jocking - it's more a simple, go-stop-go-stop or a 24/7 system. It does this VERY well. With the community radio/RSL groups - we've opted for Creator (scheduling) alongside mAirList as a live-assist player. It operates like Master Control with the "next" button but does a lot more "under the hood" if you brave the settings/config layouts.

As you'll be using it on a "Talk" station - I doubt your presenters will be getting too slick with the controls, they can simply tick the boxes next to each track and hit "Play" and they'll be played until the last ticked item and wait. This is ideal for stopsets/breaks etc. Or just hit "Auto" and it'll play until the playlists run out or a STOP marker is found. You do get a standalone "cartwall" window with the Pro version of Studio so if your presenters just want a few buttons to play in their drops/IDs then that can be displayed on a 2nd screen.

 

[BobOnTheJob]

I maintain iMediatouch for a station and SPL seems to do everything the station is using iMediatouch for. If SPL is stable (and it appears to be), I'll increasing ask myself why stations are spending $15,000-20,000 for an iMT system??

The answer to this is quite simple. 24/7 access to support personnel is invaluable... knowing a company will be around in a year is invaluable... and most operators don't want to have to email New Zealand to get support.

In some markets, an automation system that is down can cost an operator thousands of dollars per hour.

Would you trust the most mission critical part of your business to a 200 dollar piece of software?

If it were $200 (it's closer to $400), I'd have a spare (or 2 spares for that matter) loaded & running & still be thousands of dollars ahead. I'd feel much "safer" with two SPL's than 1 of anything else on the market...assuming it would do what I need. I'd almost go so far as to say I'd feel safer with 1 SPL than 1 of anything else on the market.

 

[ChiefOperator]

Thanks all for your comments-

Hey Charlie, you have some really cool software! I really like the layout of your JockMaster automation (especially the second image from top). It's very clean, with a user friendly interface. How do the players work in "auto?" Do the carts rotate into the players? Very nice... Earlier I mentioned SPL needs a more professional interface: actually it should be similiar to yours. Very well done....

You should officially introduce your software to the board, if you haven't already....

 

[Charlie]

Hi Chief,
Thanks for the kind words - Much of what you see on my site is still work in progress although I do try to post screenshots as I progress. There are various free utils on the site, one of which is a joystick/hotkey interface for EncoDAD plus a nice analogue clock and some library tagging tools. My overall aims are to write a playout package that includes a number of features that you like about the "big boy" systems. In particular, I really like Enco's Tracker but find their AirPlay quite fiddly. Myriad by PSquared (a UK effort) has remote voicetracking but doesn't support ad-hoc cue points (like CueIn) so to bring a start point forward (eg, missing the guitar intro on Hotel California) can only be done by copying the cart and removing the offening audio. Enco is brilliant at that - Head/Tail in the Cues Machine, piece of cake mAirList - which deserves a mention can mixdown a playlist to a stereo WAV based upon the cue points and envelope markers. Great if you produce a syndicated show.

To answer you questions about JockMaster - cunning observers will notice that the hotkeys look a bit like Enco's Array buttons whilst the players/playlist have an RCS feel. The players would typically load the next 3 items in the playlist which you could start/stop by pressing the associated play button - loading the next cut upon completion. This would allow you to run the show using fader-starts and hardly touch the mouse/screen. In auto mode, hitting "next" would fire the next item and place a fade on the current one. The "Carts" - I think you mean the mini hotkey panel, these would be independant and can be fired by click/touch. Drag 'n' drop between playlist, database and hotkey pages supported There is also a Database view which has big coloured buttons to allow touchscreen operation - in addition to the actual cuts database, there is also a File Browser for non-database items like MP3s off a memory stick (subject to user privileges!).

Software is not my day-to-day business - I work in an office and write mainly for fun but do undertake paid-for projects from time-to-time and certainly couldn't offer the sort of support that most "pro" users would ask for. I'd be the $200 product! But I'm happy to talk about it if you want to open a new thread or contact me off list. Ideas and suggestions are of course very welcome

 

[ChiefOperator]

"certainly couldn't offer the sort of support that most "pro" users would ask for. I'd be the $200 product!"

I wouldn't worry about that--If your product's features perform well and the software is stable 24/7, the $200 price for great software would be a drop in the bucket, especially compared to the major players. (I think SPL is priced low, given its features).

I do wish to talk more about your software. I'll start a new thread or contact you off line....

Thanks....

 

[joshzz]

I've heard great things about STATION PLAYLIST.

Concerning other low cost systems - we use Raduga ( www.raduga.net ) and are very satisfied with it. Recently we attempted to upgrade it by purchasing a different low costautomation system and had a dififcult time with it.

We went back to Raduga and love the system except for the fact that it does not offer internet voicetracking. We expect to buy an automation program at some point that offers solid, internet voice tracking (unless Raduga offers it soon) .

After having reviewed many of the programs our favorite is BSI's OP-X program - It's solid, easy to use and they offer excellent tech support. Additionally they are priced competitively -

If you don't need internet voice tracking, maybe Station Playlist or Raduga will work fine for you. josh

 

[spacetrucker]

I've used SPL for a couple of years now and the yahoo group is a real asset for anyone just getting into it. The members of the group are very helpful.

 

[Studio1]

and most operators don't want to have to email New Zealand to get support.

Can't be any worse than us here in New Zealand emailing companies like QEI and getting zero response...

At least if you email SPL they'll answer you!